Chekhov the Immigrant: Translating a Cultural Icon (review)

Abstract

Reviewed by: Chekhov the Immigrant: Translating a Cultural Icon Maria Ignatieva Michael C. Finke and Julie De Sherbinin, eds. Chekhov the Immigrant: Translating a Cultural Icon. Bloomington, Indiana: Slavica Publishers, 2007. Pp. 352. $29.95 (Pb). Chekhov the Immigrant: Translating a Cultural Icon evolved out of a successful Chekhov symposium in Maine in 2004, which marked the one-hundredth anniversary of Chekhov’s death. Explaining the title of the new collection, which he edited with Julie de Sherbinin, Michael Finke asserts that “[n]o major Russian author has been more thoroughly assimilated by the American audience” (1). This assessment is apt. Perhaps only Tchaikovsky in music and Stanislavsky in theatre can be compared to Chekhov in their powerful influence on American culture. [End Page 615] At the same time, there has always been a gap in American Chekhovian scholarship: very often Slavic scholars do not talk about theatre productions, while their colleagues in theatre often cannot adequately interpret the original texts. With the works of Vygotsky, Skaftymov, Berkovsky, Lotman, Chudakov, Katayev, and others having presented the world with a wealth of excellent philological, structural, aesthetic, and philosophical analyses of Chekhov’s prose and plays, Russian scholarship has greatly benefited from a more integrated approach. The editors of the anthology Chekhov the Immigrant intend to do likewise, to introduce readers to various angles in Chekhovian study and to bring various scholars together. The anthology offers essays on Chekhov’s drama, on the problems of translating both his prose and drama, on Chekhov’s influences on American and British writing, on performance practices, and even on the medical humanities. Thus the collection, although it cannot be equally appealing to everyone, intends to satisfy the intellectual appetites of people with various interests in the Chekhovian heritage. Some very important ideas were presented at the symposium, as is revealed in the collection’s highlights. Julie de Sherbinin argues that our preoccupations, prejudices, perceptions, and language distort iconographic ideas about Chekhov. She writes that “similar to the characters’ acts of viewing icons and pictures in Chekhov’s prose, [cultural translation] involves importing an image and seeing it in terms of one’s own orientations, in relationship to what is culturally familiar” (106). Sharon Carnicke analyses various contemporary stage translations and versions of Chekhov’s plays, trying to find the balance between critical points of view from both drama and theatre. Writing about fashionable contemporary playwrights’ adaptations (such as those of David Hare, Edward Bond, David Mamet, and Tom Stoppard, among others), Carnicke notes, “Whether ‘channeling’ or ‘exorcising’ Chekhov, whether translating or adapting him, playwrights put their own stamp upon his plays” (93). Laurence Senelick emphasizes how the incorrect translation of one word can distort the very essence of Chekhov’s plays. He writes about the importance of details and the rhythm of the characters’ speech and sounds, and he alerts translators to the “echoic effect between different characters who were not on stage at the same time” (76). An anthology requires greater methodological coherence, greater thematic focus, and tighter enforcement of writing standards than a symposium. An anthology requires commentary – and index pages – to guide its readers. Despite its highlights, the symposium has not netted an anthology: it remains a loose collection of papers too closely based on the presentations of the participants, whose methodologies, and even professional backgrounds, differed widely. The essays vary greatly in length, and some of them need much tighter editing. (Richard J. Kahn’s [End Page 616] two-page essay expresses his surprise and gratitude for having been invited to the symposium.) Some of the papers, although announced in the introduction, are not included: for example, Cynthia Marsh’s piece, alluded to on page 56, on differences between British and American translations of Chekhov and on the role of intonations and rhythms in translation. Finally, the title itself, Chekhov the Immigrant: Translating a Cultural Icon, seems to me to lack precision – calling to mind Michael Chekhov, the great actor and Anton’s nephew, so often referred to as an “immigrant”; to me, regardless of the hundreds of languages into which his writing has been or will be translated, Chekhov will remain a Russian writer and a citizen of the world...